Assessment Description:
Students are required to write an essay on one of the following two topics:
(i) Schizophrenia
(ii) Borderline Personality Disorder
The essay has to describe and critically evaluate the condition in terms of the following aspects:
i. Description in the DSM 5 (Understanding in relation to the biomedical model)
ii. Description in the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (Understanding derived from the
psychoanalytic model)
iii. Description from the critical psychotherapy perspective (bio-psychosocial model)
iv. A comparison of the assessment criteria and instruments used by the above three ways of
making sense of the condition
The essay has to be structured in relation to the above four sections and has to include a formal
introduction and a brief conclusion. A minimum of 20 high-quality readings need to be used